From 2009 to 2012 I lived in Hackensack, NJ while my wife was in graduate school at NYU. New Jersey is a top birdwatching area in the USA and not surprisingly I was bitten by the "birding bug". I started photography before getting into birds, so there was a smooth transition from photography of "nature" to mainly birds.

While living in New Jersey I visited Cape May, Barnegat Lighthouse, Sandy Hook, Liberty State Park, Stokes State Forest and the NJ Botanical Garden among other various locations in Bergen County, NJ. My local patch was Indian Pond in Teaneck, NJ as well as Richard W. DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst, NJ. The Celery Farm in Allendale, NJ was another favorite. Two other awesome places I visited while living in that area were Doodletown and Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (Queens), both in New York. The Ramble in Central Park was another frequent place I birded. It was not until moving back to Iowa that I started using eBird and chasing local to regional vagrants.

I now live in my home state of Iowa and finished a M.S. in Geoscience in May of 2018. I currently work at Integrated DNA Technologies as a Quality Control Analyst. My current birding activities consist of leading field trips with the Iowa City Bird Club and Iowa Ornithologists' Union. I also write a monthly birdwatching column for The Gazette out of Cedar Rapids. Additionally, I am the Fall Field Report editor for Iowa's flagship ornithological journal, Iowa Bird Life.

Feel free to contact me if you have any bird-related questions, including questions about birding in Iowa: brandon.caswell83@gmail.com

Bird on!!!